Amanda Greenlee ('13) | Computer Science

Hometown: Bowie, Texas

One of the greatest concerns for college students is finding a job after graduation. For senior Amanda Greenlee, this question is not keeping her up at nights. Amanda is set to graduate in May and begin her new job in June.

ACU's commitment to getting companies to hire their students for jobs and internships is what helped me land my own internship and eventual job.

Amanda is not alone among ACU graduates. A recent survey by the Career Center showed that 90 percent of last May’s graduates were employed or in graduate school within six months of walking across the stage. The acceptance rate for those going on to medical or dental schools also tops 90 percent - or double the national average. For the School of Information Technology and Computing and several other majors, that number is 100 percent.

Getting a jump on the job search

Amanda starts her job June 8 as a software developer with Rackspace, a cloud hosting company based in San Antonio, Texas. "It feels so great to be able to focus on just school my last semester and not have to worry about job hunting," she says.

Amanda, a computer science major from Bowie, Texas, has spent the last two summers interning with Rackspace. She spent her first summer working on a project that overlaid a map of Rackspace over Google Maps and built in searching functionality to search for people and conference rooms, while teaming with Microsoft Exchange. Her second summer was spent working on a logging service that allowed various internal applications to log and retrieve their data.

'"The future for Rackspace is very exciting, and I'm so happy to be with them to see what happens," Greenlee says. "ACU's commitment to getting companies to hire their students for jobs and internships is what helped me land my own internship and eventual job."

Love at first byte

Amanda was instantly hooked once she was introduced to the world of software and technology.

"I was looking for a growing field that would be challenging enough that I would never get bored," she says. "I had also always wanted to learn how to program but never got the opportunity. I watched a woman software engineer give a presentation my senior year of high school, and suddenly it clicked that this would be a perfect fit for me."

Although the road has not always been easy, Amanda has loved every moment of it and challenges others to pursue what they are passionate about.

"For a new computer science student, my advice would be to remember that computer science is equally rewarding and challenging," Amanda says. "Work hard and keep your motivation up while in college, and you will soon be in a growing, exciting field after graduation."